Torchwood Tales
by the Ambassador
Summary: 'The Bravest Man In The World' and other stories.
1. The Bravest Man In The World

A/n: My first Torchwood fic, and what do I produce? Pure, unadulterated CRACK, inspired by a kids' story I read once and can't remember the author of. I apologise heartily.

For the nitpickers, timeline reference is someplace in Series Two, after Meat and before the Mess Involving Martha. (That makes it sound like the mess was Martha's fault, which it wasn't, for those of you who have not yet seen it. Some of it was aliens, and most of it was Jack, really. I shall not go into any more detail than that.)

I do not own the Torchwood Institute, nor the cousins who have worked there, nor the fine people who brought their work into the public eye.

* * *

Once upon a time, about two years ago, there was a Torchwood in Cardiff under the Millennium Square, and it had five people in it. There was Gwen, and Owen, and Toshiko, and Ianto, and Captain Jack Harkness who was the leader of them all. He was quite a good leader, and the other four all liked him-but he was terribly annoying.

He flirted with everyone he met, from Gwen's fiancée to Ianto's cat. And because he was so tall and strong and handsome, a lot of the people he flirted with liked it and flirted back. But that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.

He drove as though he had never learned to tell the difference between Real Life and the dodgems at a fairground, and until they had gotten accustomed to it, every time he drove his team anywhere in their big black car, they could not immediately spring into action when they got wherever they were going because they had to stop first to be sick. But that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.

One time he disappeared without warning into a police phone box which then disappeared itself, and was gone for months, and everybody went out of their heads worrying about him. And when he did finally reappear he refused to explain any of it. But even that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.

No, the problem was that due to an interesting incident a long time ago that had involved a pretty blonde girl who didn't know what she was doing because she hadn't read any instruction manuals, Captain Jack Harkness could not die. And the problem with _that_ was that, since nothing could kill him or even hurt him for very long-

"He isn't scared of anything!" said his team to each other. "He must be the Bravest Man In The World." And they were very annoyed indeed, because it really did not seem fair to them that Captain Jack should be allowed to go around being not scared of anything(which they were)because he was unkillable(which they were not). And they often-when Captain Jack was not around to hear-grumbled about it.

One day when there weren't many aliens, they were all sitting around grumbling together over mugs of coffee, which Ianto had made, and a double-sized packet of party ring biscuits, which Toshiko had brought in and Owen was stealing more than his fair share of. He had just managed to capture the last two and had shoved them both in his mouth, whole, at once, when Gwen said:

"Well, he must be scared of something. Everybody's scared of something. It's just a question of finding out what."

"Bffmffshp," said Owen, and then had to cough very loudly because his throat was full of crumbs.

"Serve you right," said Ianto. "I only had one."

"Have another drink to wash it down," said Toshiko, and then, "So, are you suggesting we carry out tests _to_ find out what?"

"No!" replied Gwen, very shocked, and then, after considering it for a moment, "Actually, yes. It'd do that man good to be knocked off his high horse."

"A-bloody-_men_!" agreed Owen, who had gotten over his coughing. "And about time too."

"I'm not sure about this idea," said Toshiko doubtfully.

"_I_ like it," said Ianto.

"There you go," said Owen very cheerfully, "we've got his boyfriend's consent so it's obviously all right. Are there any more biscuits?"

At this point the other three knocked him down and sat on him.

* * *

Toshiko was the first to try scaring Captain Jack, but her heart was not really in it. Still, one night she burst into his office, where he was snoozing with his head on the desk. (Captain Jack always slept in his office, and tried to get away with it by claiming he never slept at all. It was another of the annoying things about him.)

"Jack!" shrieked Toshiko, trying to look terrified. "Jack!"

"Wstfgl?" said Captain Jack drowsily, then, "Just resting my eyes. What is it?" He suppressed a yawn.

"Er," said Toshiko, whose mind had gone blank. She had made up some utterly Horrible News to tell him, but put on the spot like this she found she couldn't remember it. Clutching at the first thing she could think of, she found herself saying hopelessly, "The roof is on fire?"

"'We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn,'" mumbled Jack, and went back to sleep again. He snored very loudly.

* * *

Captain Jack Harkness was ambling unhurriedly around the Torchwood vaults, checking that everything was where it was supposed to be, when a Weevil jumped out at him going "RRRAGHhaaah!"

"Hi, Owen," Jack said to the Weevil.

"I'm not Owen," said the Weevil. "I'm a Weevil. RAARGHAAARRRRAAH!"

"Weevils don't wear trainers," pointed out Jack.

The Weevil looked down at its feet. "They might do sometimes," it said defensively.

"They don't speak English either," Jack added.

"I'm not! Am I?" asked the Weevil.

"Yes you are," said Jack. "In an East End accent."

"Bugger," said the Weevil.

"It's a good mask, though," said Jack, encouragingly.

* * *

"Myfanwy," said Ianto firmly. "It was difficult enough catching her to begin with. He has to be at least a little bit scared of Myfanwy."

Myfanwy was the pterodactyl that lived in Torchwood because they had not been able to find anywhere else to put her. Mostly she was no trouble, but nevertheless Ianto always felt a bit nervous when she shrieked like a bicycle being murdered while he was minding his own business making the coffee.

Ianto was certain that she would be able to scare Captain Jack. Myfanwy, however, did not feel inclined to cooperate.

"Go on," Ianto told her. "Go and screech at him or something."

Myfanwy just hung from her perch and looked at him disinterestedly.

"I'll give you a fish," promised Ianto. (Pterodactyls like fish. Myfanwy had a particular taste for smoked salmon, which they had discovered by accident the time Toshiko brought some in on a bagel for lunch.)

Myfanwy rustled her wings.

"What are you doing, Ianto?" asked Captain Jack, coming up behind him.

"Um," said Ianto, who couldn't think of a good excuse. "What are _you_ doing?"

"I brought Myfanwy a fish," said Jack, holding up a fishy-smelling carrier bag. Myfanwy perked up visibly and fixed one beady eye on it. "Good girl! Here you go!" He produced a large halibut from the bag, and tossed it up towards the pterodactyl, who snapped it neatly out of the air, then swooped down and buffeted Jack with her wings in a friendly fashion.

"So much for that," muttered Ianto to himself.

"Did you say something?" asked Jack, straightening his greatcoat.

"YARK!" said Myfanwy.

* * *

"Oh, you are all hopeless," Gwen said, giggling.

"You think of better, then," Owen demanded grumpily.

Gwen stopped giggling, because she couldn't, and they went down from Ianto's office to the proper part of Torchwood to get on with work.

It was a slow day. Owen watered his plants. Toshiko fiddled with the Torchwood firewalls, which were quite good enough already, but which she thought it was better to be safe than sorry about. Ianto and Jack checked the emergency weapons to make sure they were all working correctly and had ammunition and so on. Gwen wrote up a not-very-interesting event for the record. (There had indeed been an alien involved. But he had only stopped at Earth to ask directions, and once he had them had got back into his ship and gone off again without making any trouble.)

Gwen had just finished her report, and was just considering the merits of going out for doughnuts, when a delicate silk thread lowered itself from the ceiling just above her computer, with a very small money spider on the end of it.

"Hullo there," she said to it. Gwen was quite fond of spiders, even though her fiancée Rhys kept asking her to remove them from the bath. "What are you doing in here? There aren't any flies for you, well, maybe there's some godawful alien ones the size of golf carts." She smiled, and held out her hand for the spider to lower itself into.

"Who're you talking to, Gwen?" asked Jack, coming over to see.

"Just this little fellow," she told him, holding out her hand to show him.

Captain Jack Harkness looked at the tiny creature making its way across Gwen's palm...

...and went pale...

...and screamed.

Everyone came running at that.

"Uhh, Jack, what's the problem?" asked Gwen.

"Good grief," said Ianto, and began to laugh.

"I do not _believe_ this," said Toshiko, going goggle-eyed.

"It's only a bloody spider!" said Owen.

"YAAAARK!" said Myfanwy, who thought she had heard another pterodactyl, and had gotten excited.

And:

"Take it away! Take it away!" begged the bravest man in the world.


	2. The Tale of Owen Harper

A/n: This is based, mostly, on an Ancient Greek myth I heard a long time ago. I own neither it nor Torchwood, nor a little musical side-fling that most of you will probably see here.

A little explanation seems due; for some reason, Torchwood's very this-worldliness makes me want to tell stories in old fashion. Myths, fairy tales, and children's stories. Having written this, the logical next step seemed to be to organise a collection. More may or may not be forthcoming; hopefully they will. The title is a homage to 'Tanglewood Tales', though the very word 'Torchwood' has a mythic sort of feel to it by itself, I think. Life is fun like that sometimes.

* * *

**The Tale of Owen Harper**

**

* * *

**

Once upon a time there was a family called Harper, and they were all of them rogues and no-goods and rascals. Some of them were thieves, and some were liars, and a few even went into Law so as to be both at once-anyway, they were trouble the whole pack of 'em.

Now it came to pass that a Harper woman and her man had a son, who they named Owen. When little Owen was still a babe in his cradle his mother got it into her head that she'd like to know what Fate had in store for her son, so she took him to an astrologer and bade him cast the child's horoscope. And the astrologer did as he was told, and worked out his sums and drew his charts, and when he was done, he told the mother:

"Your son shall be the greatest and grandest rogue who ever was, and he shall steal from the richest king in the world."

Of course, being Harpers and bad to the bone, the woman was very pleased with this, and when she told her man he was pleased too. Imagine their shock, then, when young Owen grew up, and told them he wanted to be, not a robber, or a footpad, or a bandit king, nor even a lawyer or judge, but a doctor.

"But what about your grand destiny?" cried his mother. But Owen just laughed. No matter how she coaxed or cajoled him, nothing would turn him from his course. So she packed his bags for him, in high dudgeon, and sent him away to medical school.

And so Owen Harper studied, for long years, every form of medicine known to man. He was as cunning as any of his family, and a quick study, so he got top marks in all his classes, and soon became Dr. Owen Harper, with letters after his name. Still, he carried on studying. When mortal men had no more to teach him, he went and studied under all sorts of other doctors-demon doctors, and faery doctors, and alien doctors. Some said he even studied under Old Father Time-who is the best doctor of all, for don't they say 'Time heals all wounds'?

At last, however, Owen Harper judged his student days at an end, for he knew all there is to be known about medicine. So he settled down in a city by the sea, and began plying his trade. He quickly gained a reputation as the best and wisest doctor of them all. No matter how deathly ill or gravely wounded a patient was when they were brought to him, Owen Harper would have them right as rain in no time flat. He became rich, and respected, and he never gave a thought to his mother's talk of his destiny.

One day, though, Owen was sitting in his fine, big flat, flipping through the newest Mim's List and drinking good whiskey, when he heard a knock on the door. When he went to answer it, he saw before him a man ten feet tall, all grey bones and grey smoke, with no face but a bare, grinning skull, and a jewelled crown on his brow.

"You've been robbing me, Owen Harper," said the skeleton-man.

Well, Owen was so scared he could barely think. But you don't get to be the best doctor in the world without a large helping of courage. So he put up his chin and answered back boldly, "No I've not. Maybe you've got me confused with one of my relatives. I'm _Doctor_ Owen Harper, never stolen anything in my life..."

"I know who you are!" snapped the skeleton-man. "But you obviously don't recognise _me_. I am Death, and you _have_ been robbing me, Owen Harper. You have been robbing me of what is rightfully mine. So many souls that I should have had in my kingdom by now, are still walking this world-because of you! You are interfering with Fate, and I won't have it."

"Well tough luck, loser," replied Owen, narrowing his eyes at Death, and hoping that his fear didn't show. "I'm a doctor. Curing people is what I do, and I'm not about to stop."

Death laughed at that-a terrible noise, something like a raven cawing, something like the coughing of a child dying from tuberculosis. "You forget who I am, Owen Harper. I am the richest and most powerful king in the world. All that lives must come to me, sooner or later. And in your case, it will be sooner!" And with the speed of a striking snake, Death reached into Owen's chest with one smoky grey claw of a hand, and stopped his heart then and there, before dragging the doctor down to his own dark kingdom-the land where no wind blows, where no snow falls, where no birds sing, where no plants grow, where no bells ring. The blackness of the last full stop; the end of all that is.

"Cheery place, this," said the shade of Owen Harper, looking about him at the darkness, at the other shades flitting through it.

"Most certainly. Make yourself at home, Dr. Harper," Death said, grinning his skull-grin, before leaving to go and collect more souls. Death is always busy.

He rode the four winds, following war, famine and pestilence, reaping all that men had sown. He took joy in his work, and joy particularly in knowing that, now, that _pesky_ doctor was no threat to him.

When he got back, though...when he saw what Owen had been doing in his absence...oh, he was livid.

For Owen Harper had not stopped doctoring, even in death. So great was his skill that he was able to cure the very shades, and return them to life.

"What are you DOING?" howled Death. "Those people are DEAD. They are MINE!"

Owen just smirked.

"Stop this at once!" Death roared, his voice full of the wailing of a thousand doomed infants.

"Shan't," said Owen.

"I will punish you for this!" Death shrieked.

"I'm already dead," pointed out Owen. He smirked even wider. "What more can you do to me?"

Well, Death fumed and seethed and ranted and raged, but there _was_ nothing he could do. And that just made him angrier still.

"Very well!" he declared at last. "Owen Harper, you shall go back to the land of the living-back there for good. I decree my realm closed to you forevermore. You shall walk the earth, neither dead nor alive, until time's end. Anything to get you out of my sight and stop you from undermining my kingdom!"

And so Owen Harper was allowed to return to Earth, though, as Death had promised, he was never truly alive again. The chill of the grave clung to him; food became dust and ashes in his mouth, and human touch afforded him no warmth. Yet this did not stop him from working, and there was still no finer physician in the world.

He's still out there, somewhere, today, for Death will not have him back at any price. He travels the world constantly, never settling in one place for long, always moving on to where he's needed most, always searching for new ways to cheat Death out of human souls, the greatest and grandest rogue of all. If you meet him, you probably won't know him, for he is, after all, a Harper, a master of disguises and tricks. But if you should happen to become one of his patients, by one thing you may recognise him; the doctor with hands that are always icy cold.


	3. Master of all Masters

A/n: Yet another bit of Torchwood silliness. This one is based on an English folktale, which, of course, I do not own. Neither do I own Torchwood, or the other side-fling in this piece.

* * *

**Master of all Masters**

* * *

Once upon a time, nearly four years ago, there was a young man called Ianto Jones, quiet and retiring, but thoughtful and fair to look at, and what he wanted more than anything was to be a member of Torchwood Three. However, Captain Jack Harkness, who was Torchwood Three's leader, didn't want to hire Ianto.

So Ianto pestered and he pestered, and followed Captain Jack around, and in the end the captain agreed to take him on as a tea-boy just to get him to shut up. So Ianto Jones and his pet pterodactyl moved into the Torchwood under Cardiff, and Ianto made the coffee and did the filing and answered the phones and tidied up everyone else's mess, and he never complained about any of it, and he always wore an impeccable suit and tie, and was always unfailingly polite.

But Captain Jack Harkness was very annoyed that he had been made to hire someone against his will, even if that someone was as handsome and clever and useful as Ianto. So he went out of his way to make things difficult for Ianto, as revenge. But Ianto never complained-he just smiled and got on with his work-which made Captain Jack even angrier, and he racked his brains for ways to get back at the young man.

One day, Jack came up to Ianto while he was making the coffee, and said to him, "You've been here long enough now, and you've been doing okay, I guess, but you're never going to be anyone in Torchwood if you don't know what things are called. What would you call _me_, for example?"

"Why, Jack or Sir or whatever you please, sir," replied Ianto, confused.

"No," corrected Jack, "you must call me 'Master of all masters'."

"Master of all masters?" echoed Ianto.

Jack grinned. "That's right. And what would you call this?" he asked, pointing at a desk.

"Why, desk or table or whatever you please, sir," answered Ianto.

"No; you must call it 'delicatessen'. And what would you call this?" asked Jack, pointing at the little stream that ran through the Hub from the fountain up above.

"Why, water or wet or whatever you please, sir," said Ianto.

"No; you must call it pondaloroxum. And what would you call this?" questioned Jack, indicating the flame of the blowtorch that Suzie Costello, one of his _real_ team-members, was using.

"Why, fire or flame or whatever you please, sir."

"No; you must call it 'rataxicalliphlogiston'. And what would you call her?" he continued, gesturing towards Suzie herself.

"Why, Suzie or Suzanna or whatever you please, sir."

"No," grinned Jack, "you must call her 'Susan Salmagundi'." (Suzie began to giggle.) "And what would you call him?" This time he indicated another of his real team-members, Owen Harper.

"Why, Owen or Doctor or whatever you please, sir."

"No; you must call him 'Doctor Glannister down-the-banister'." (Owen snorted.) "And what would you call her?" Jack pointed at the last of his team, Toshiko Sato, who was watching the conversation very curiously.

"Why, Toshiko or Tosh or whatever you please, sir."

"No; you must call her 'The Computerwizard of Cardiff'." (Toshiko began to giggle too, and also went a bit pink at the compliment.) "And what would you call that?" pointing at the pterodactyl circling overhead.

"Why, pterodactyl or pteranodon, or whatever you please, sir."

"No; you must call it 'Little Lucy Leatherwing'. And what," Jack spread his arms in a gesture that took in the whole Hub, "would you call all this?"

"Why, Hub or base or whatever you please, sir."

"No," finished Jack triumphantly, "you must call it 'The Cave of Caerbannog'." ("Ni! Ni! Ni!" shouted Owen; "Ni, pang, ni-wom!" yelled Susie, who'd had to put down her blowtorch because she was laughing so much.) "Think you can remember all that, Ianto?"

"I believe so, sir," replied Ianto levelly.

"And when you can say all those words, all at once, and get them all right," continued Jack, as if Ianto had not spoken, "then _you_ can be head of Torchwood!" And he walked off, sniggering like mad.

Clever Ianto was not long in making an occasion to use those words. He took some rags, dipped them in petrol, and stole up to the pterodactyl's nest and tied them to the beast's tail. Then he took a match and lit them; and the pterodactyl, poor thing, took off with a great squawking and shrieking, hurling itself through the air in a vain attempt to run away from the fire on its tail. And _then_, fast as he could, Ianto dashed to Jack's office, waving his arms about and shouting:

"Master of all masters, get up from your delicatessen, and come to the aid of Susan Salmagundi, Doctor Glannister down-the-banister, and the Computerwizard of Cardiff. Little Lucy Leatherwing has got some rataxicalliphlogiston on its tail, and unless you get some pondaloroxum, the Cave of Caerbannog will be all on rataxicalliphlogiston!"


	4. Bans

A/n: What is this I don't even...

* * *

**Bans**

* * *

"What's this?" Martha asked, poking at a bit of paper.

"Ianto's list of bans," said Gwen.

"Last week," Toshiko explained further, "he banned paper-aeroplane fights, slap wars, stuffing entire doughnuts into your mouth at once, improper use of alarm clocks, talking Scottish, talking Klingon, pretending to be senile, pretending to be TV chefs, Quasimodo impersonations, singing advertising jingles, Calvinball, raving in the SUV, feeding the pterodactyl pizza, doing bits out of Monty Python, making rude noises when other people are trying to speak, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, womble songs, decorating the Weevils, Owen's ant farm, and my party piece that he said was a choking hazard."

Martha sniffed. "All those rules," she said dismissively. "I hope you don't take any notice."

"We have to," admitted Tosh mournfully. "Or else he cuts off the supply of coffee."

"We've gotten good at finding things he _hasn't_ banned, though," Gwen added reassuringly.

Martha looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled wickedly. "Has he banned Bohemian Rhapsody?" she queried.

The other two women grinned. "Not yet."


End file.
